You made your crosswalk, now you have to die in it.

College Park has asked Prince George's County to replace a yellow blinking light that drivers routinely ignore with a red light at the spot where the College Park Trolley Trail crosses Paint Branch Parkway. The site has been the location of three crashes, which resulted in a pedestrian, cyclists and a car stopped to let a pedestrian cross being hit. But Prince George's County says they can't do that because of federal guidelines.

Andre’ Issayans, deputy director of the county Department of Public Works and Transportation, told the council the intersection didn’t have nearly enough pedestrian traffic to justify a stoplight.

Paint Branch Parkway is a county road College Park cannot do any work on itself. The county follows federal highway guidelines, which require 100 or more pedestrians crossing per hour for at least four hours or at least 190 for any one hour, plus fewer than 60 gaps in traffic per hour. When the county last studied pedestrian traffic at the crosswalk several years ago, traffic engineers observed only around 30 pedestrians over several hours, Issayans said.

But guidelines are not laws. Let's not tie our hands with them when there seems to be real need.  Issayans went farther saying that this isn't the county's fault, it's College Park's; because they built the crosswalk in a dangerous location.

The county officials blamed College Park for what they called an unsafe location for the crosswalk — a location the city had lobbied for to make the hiker-biker trail possible.

“That crossing should not have been there. It was the wrong place for it, and College Park pushed for it,” Issayans said.

Then thye add this.

It’s much safer for pedestrians and bicyclists to cross a highway at a signalized intersection, he said.

Which is why College Park is asking to signalize the intersection.

Issayans thinks they should reroute the trail 2000 feet to Route 1, have people cross there, and then go 2000' back to get to the trail bridge over Paint Branch. Way to encourage cycling PG County.

Update the Gazette covers the same story with some new details

Mayor Stephen Brayman said that while the city wanted the crosswalk, the county ultimately approved it and thus remains partially responsible for its safety.

Issayans said the county could possibly place a speed camera along Paint Branch Parkway near the crosswalk next year, which would ticket drivers exceeding the 35 mph speed limit.

Council members were very skeptical, saying cameras would only slow cars but not stop them at the intersection. They added that a camera would offer little deterrent during its non-operational hours, which are weekdays from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. and all day on weekends.

"A speed camera doesn't get people to stop at an intersection," said Councilman Patrick Wojahn (Dist. 3). "A speed camera gets people to drive 35 mph ... I don't see how that's a solution."

Outgoing Mayor Brayman will be replaced by Mayor-elect Andrew Fellows on Dec. 8, but said the city would be well-served to arrange a new traffic count at the intersection this spring in hopes that it will meet minimum pedestrian counts.

Comments

[Froggie]

As I've said before, if there's any location where the HAWK signal would work, this is it.

[Lucre]

It's a peeve of mine - "you're" headline is misspelled.

For what it's worth, I agree with Froggie wholeheartedly. Would a HAWK qualify as a "stoplight" under the guidelines? If so, next time the county does a count, why not organize a group of people to walk back and forth in the crosswalk to skew the numbers? (Why not? Because they'd be risking their lives.)

[Contrarian]

A definition of a HAWK signal is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAWK_beacon. It's basically a pedestrian-activated red light. It is classified as experimental, and can be used with FHA approval.

The position of the DPW guys is mind-numbing in its illogic. A signal that motorists disobey is better than one that they obey? And if pedestrian traffic is low, wouldn't that mean that the signal is infrequently used and thus affects traffic little?

[Washcycle]

Fiddlesticks. I'm awful with homophones. Stupid left brain.

[Washcycle]

Good point Contrarian. Also few crosses may be indicative of how dangerous it is. There were probably zero crossings of the Beltway before the North Bethesda Trail bridges were put in, but that doesn't mean there was no demand. Again, first we need to get a lot of people to risk their lives crossing, and then they'll add the safety requirements. Like the line from "Three Kings."

[Annonymous]

Hey this is PG county (said with all due disrespect). You expect better?

[SJE]

There are not enough pedestrians because they all got run over.

[Jon]

We have a county executive election coming up in PG County. Perhaps if enough people ask candidates about this, we can put pressure on them to make promises.

For me, it's either that, or asking candidates about how they feel about shooting dogs, but that's another story.

[Contrarian]

Hey this is PG county (said with all due disrespect). You expect better?

If you follow traffic issues one of the things you realize is that traffic control is behavior and politics under a veneer of science. The people in charge of making traffic decisions call themselves "engineers" but they are political actors. Traffic decisions often pit the interests of one group against the interests of another, and those decisions are often made on the basis of who those groups are.

The crosswalk here presents a typical example. The interests of drivers, who presumably would rather not stop, are pitted against pedestrians, who would prefer the drivers did stop. DPW is in favor of a traffic control that won't actually cause drivers to stop even though a traffic control is available that would cause drivers to stop. They are dressing their decision up in the language of engineering, but they are really taking the side of motorists over pedestrians.

In fairness to PGC, note that DC also uses flashing yellow lights at crosswalks -- but only in the eastern, poorer part of the city. In the western part of the city -- say, at Connecticut Avenue in front of the Zoo -- they have no objection to putting in mid-block, pedestrian-controlled red lights.

[mike]

Contrarian is right....

[Mark]

Issayans should be looking for a new job.

[Mark]

Oh, yeah, and College Park doesn't get to paint wherever it pleases. The crosswalk in question was marked by the County. If the County engineers didn't think the location was safe, or could be made safe, then they never should have allowed a crosswalk in the first place.

[Dana]

Any chance someone might put together an online petition? I'm a PG County resident and would be more than happy to sign. Every time I bicycle through that crosswalk, I wish there were a stoplight there.

[Contrarian]

Another advantage of the HAWK signal, from the perspective of traffic engineers: under current law in DC, MD and VA, pedestrians at crosswalks always have right of way. The only way you can that that away is through a Walk/Don't Walk signal -- which a HAWK has.

If traffic engineers want to limit pedestrian right of way to manage traffic flow, I'd much rather they did it with a HAWK than the current passive-aggressive way of putting up controls that motorists are unlikely to obey.